The Oldest Photo of Lynchburg?

Our center spread features what is likely the oldest photographic representation of Lynchburg. On a recent trip to a conference in Virginia Beach, Doug Harvey, director of the Lynchburg Museum, spotted a daguerreotype of Lynchburg that none of us had seen before. The image was published in the book, Photography in Virginia, by Virginia Historical Society curator Jeffrey Ruggles in 2008 to accompany an exhibition at the Society, where the daguerreotype is currently on loan. Donated to the Valentine Richmond History Center in the 1960s, the image had been unidentified all these years until Ruggles realized the view showed Lynchburg.